Photograph by Tim Poly

CIRCLES AND WHEELS

Photographs by George Holzer

Exhibition installation of the artifact deposit

Photograph by George Holzer

THE DISCOVERY

The deposit that was uncovered had five large circles, with smaller ones surrounding them. The largest circle was an aquamarine glass bottle base, next was a circle made out of white marble fragments, then there was a circle of red tobacco cans, now brown with rust. The fourth circle was a steel wheel with dozens of spokes, and lastly, a large buried bottle, that had been broken since it was first placed in the ground. Smaller circles were made of bottle bases and the lid of a canning jar that had an equal sided cross molded into it during manufacture. This deposit represents the significance of the symbol of the circle to the free African Americans living on the Wye House property in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is from here, that we looked towards the present, and we found the emergence of the wheel in today’s contexts. It continues to maintain its significance in the churches and gardens maintained by African Americans in the Chesapeake region.